11/26/2023 0 Comments All men are created equal meaning![]() ![]() Even though Thomas Jefferson owned slaves to his death, I believe this is what Jefferson meant when he said "all men are created equal" - that Americans are entitled to equal justice under the law (Patterson 10).Įquality is not something that a government can grant or deny a body of citizens for this right is unalienable. The written law does not look at one's race but at the crime committed the sentencing should not be dependent on the race of the convict. De facto equality, on the other hand, is, as Martin Luther King, Jr. On the one hand, most Americans' notion of legal equality makes no such distinctions. Jefferson's restrictive definition, that "people are of equal moral worth, and as such deserve equal treatment under the law", made distinctions for free men vs. (Patterson 132)Įquality is hard to define because its meaning keeps changing. Questioned Frederick Douglass in his Rochester speech: "Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?" (Lowance 41) Fortunately for Douglass (and all races and both sexes), the United States has moved to achieve full legal equality. For Jefferson and many of our Founding Fathers, the phrase "…that all men are created equal…" really meant that "all free, property-owning males are created equal". Jefferson's words certainly had no reference to black people, of whom the majority at that time had no place in American society except as property.įor Americans, equality is a word that has been expanded in its definition since the founding of the country. The Declaration of Independence, which contains the oft-repeated phrase "…that all men are created equal…" was written by Thomas Jefferson, who owned about 200 slaves at the time and never set any of them free, even upon his death. The meaning of Thomas Jefferson's phrase “all men are created equal”
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